The End in the Beginning
by truglasgowgal
Summary: He always retreats back to what he knows, and everything he knows has resided in the Waldorf penthouse, at one time or another. CB, Eleanor, Bart dynamic with a bit of Misty thrown in.


Hi!  
So, I know I shouldn't be posting anything but updates for my WIPs, but I'm super busy with assignments for uni, and my new job, and just general life and haven't been able to complete the things I wanted. So, I set myself the task of writing whatever I could for one of my 'Next-to-be-Posted' fics – since there's a few one-shots in there – and gave myself just over two hours to do it, and then I would post whatever I'd done. This one seemed appropriate given the content of the last episode – no spoilers though, don't worry ;)  
Also, this wasn't originally supposed to be quite like this, but I tinkered with the start and end so it fit better with the most recent episode – hopefully you can catch the connotations.

Hope you enjoy…

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**Title:** The End in the Beginning  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own anything except a few plot points I devised for my own making  
**Summary:** He always retreats back to what he knows, and everything he knows has resided in the Waldorf penthouse, at one time or another.

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_"For me, the only things of interest are those linked to the heart."  
_**_Audrey Hepburn_**

.

"_She has your eyes."_

The words haunt her as she stares into the room where her daughter lies.

She remembers with perfect clarity how mesmerized he had looked when he'd uttered the words; gaze transfixed on her daughter, never wavering.

It had startled her then to think any child of his could have eyes as utterly enthralling as his, she feels the goosebumps on her skin as she recalls the moment; because even then she realised she was laying witness to something astounding.

Something stirred within the man then, as his eyes bore into her daughter's form; and she knew what was happening, possibly even before he did, for it was the exact moment Bart Bass began to know what it felt like to be a parent.

.

It's the night before his wedding, his second, and she finds him drinking scotch like it will burn the memories of this day from his mind. She looks across at the clock and shares the moment with him; watching the minutes tick by, feeling the air dispel around them. She wishes it were that easy to forget.

Charles Bartholomew Bass was born just before the clock clicked past 6:12pm, named just as the clock hit on 6.30pm and held within his parents' arms those moments in between. His mother died seventeen minutes after he came into the world; the whispered sound of her son's name on her husband's lips drowning out anything else she might've heard.

Seventeen years ago, she was lying on her hospital bed in front of them, blood pooling around her, arms reaching, mouth gaping.

Their sixty seconds is up; and Misty Bass is dead.

And Eleanor remembers the exact moment. Remembers how her best friend's mouth fell open, suddenly too heavy, for words, for air. She remembers the dampness that seeped into her skin, those moments of wondering if her face would ever dry. She remembers not breathing, for such a long time, and then hearing a baby's cry and feeling the air rush back into her lungs. She remembers turning to the man standing next to her; his face a stream of emotions, body stiff, and her eyes falling instantly to the little baby boy cradled in his arms.

It was instinctual; the way he took care of his son. The boy's cries for attention didn't cease, and he struggled against the hold placed on him; but his father held strong, tried to veer him away from that which had destroyed him so, tried to protect him the only way he knew how. He kept him close, tried to provide him with something other than that which he craved to manage his concentration.

It's how they've lived ever since.

.

His son descends the staircase, and she will have a few choice words for Dorota about her daughter's _bed partners_ once he has gone.

She watches him from afar; sees his coat-tails flap in the rush of air and his polished shoes skid across the floor in his rush to make up for lost time. And then she watches him stop; sees the wind in his sails seem to deflate as his soles catch onto the spot before the piano, _her_ piano, and they stay rooted there.

She knows what has caught his attention: the embossed frame, the woman staring proudly back at them.

Looking at him now, she takes him all in: the alluring slant of his eyes, the strong jaw-line, the angled cheekbones; the dark hair, even darker eyes.

And God does he ever look like his mother.

"I was the first one to hold you, you know," she tells him, watching him carefully. "The only one to hold you, in fact, after your father finally let you go."

His head snaps up at this, and she knows what's going through his mind, because it went through hers.

"I used to think that your father loved your mother so much that there simply wasn't enough left for him to give to you."

His eyes are dark, intense.

She could drown in them, she knows. It's one of the reasons she's never been able to truly remain that close to him: he has his mother's eyes, like her daughter has hers. Except when her husband looks at Blair, he sees her staring back at him. She imagines when Bart looks at his son, he sees his dead wife; she knows she does.

"I was wrong."

Her admission does nothing to soften his gaze; if anything it makes it ever more concentrated. And seeing him now, seeing this: she can't blame Bart Bass for neglecting his son for so long, can't blame him for barely being able to look at him; for she knows the hurt it must make him feel to have to see everything his wife was staring back at him from his young son's face. She can't blame him; she won't. Because she has done the same with the boy; and now that she has seen him, _truly_ seen him; she can't imagine she's strong enough to do any different.

And she knows if her best friend were alive she'd hate them for it; hate them for blaming the boy who is nothing but his mother's son. Because he is all they have left of her; and they treat his existence like the breath that was stolen from her lungs during that last moment when she could see nothing in the world but him.

He is her son; and she loved him from the start.

So did they; and that's part of the problem.

"He loved you more than he could have ever possibly imagined; and he didn't know how to cope with that."

It's true; she shares many things in common with his father, and one of them is their unwavering love for the boy who stands before her.

They loved him then, and they love him still.

It is one of the reasons why it is so difficult to look at him; to stand by and see his mother in everything he does. Because the moment they admit just how much he means to them; the moment they fully accept him into their lives; it will be like they have replaced her life with his. And they will be proclaiming this as acceptable, when it is not.

It should never have been this way.

They should never have been forced to choose.

"I have something for you," she says after a long moment, and she tears her eyes away; turns before his gaze can sear her any more, takes slow, almost deliberate steps away from him because she fears she is shaking so much.

She returns a few moments later with a small photograph. When their fingers brush as he takes the card from her, she pulls back as if burned. He doesn't comment; face neutral, eyes dark.

His eyes drop to the image in the palm of his hand, and he studies it closely, his body completely still, as if he is unable to breathe at all during the entire passing of time.

She was stunning, even mere moments after giving birth. Her smile was tired, but proud; and her eyes shone with an impossible brightness, as her forehead rested against her husband's and they watched over the little boy in his arms.

"He's waited seventeen years for this moment, Charles," she tells him, a faint smile tracing the outline of her lips. "No one should be denied the gift of a second chance."

"He's just like you, you know," she comments then. "All he ever wanted was a family."

Her eyes fall to the image he cradles in his protective grasp; the family that never was. She had never seen them look more content, more at peace than in that moment.

Seventeen minutes is not enough time to get to know your child; then again, seventeen years isn't either.

"Happy birthday, Charles," she says then; and leaves him alone with one of the few gifts she will ever be able to give him in this life.

It's not enough, of this she knows; but she isn't supposed to be his mother. His mother is dead; and she could never even come close to filling that role. She was not put on this earth to be his parent; Bart wasn't put on this earth to be his parent alone.

.

"What was it like?" he asks.

The question startles her, as does his presence, and she looks up from the album that is full of photos of her life with her family and friends; each one void of his mother's presence.

She sees his silhouette in the dim firelight, the shadows dancing across his face. His hair looks like burnt firewood, his face ashen; and he looks like his mother: the moment death took her.

"When she died," he whispers hoarsely; it makes her wonder how long it has been since he last spoke to anyone, used his mouth for speech rather than just a vessel for breathing.

She hesitates for a moment, casts a look down at the photo from her _second_ wedding day; her own second chance. There is no Misty, no Bart either.

"Lonely," she acknowledges, for perhaps the first time since her best friend died.

When she raises her head, he meets her eyes; and she sees them glimmer in the dying light of the fire, and he nods, completely understanding.

"I'm sorry," he tells her then, clearing his throat.

"Your father couldn't live in your house when she died, sold it straight away," she says to that, blinking away the unshed tears. "He said he couldn't live there; that he saw her everywhere he went."

"And what about you?" his voice is so full of emotion; it threatens to choke her. "Did you ever see her?"

"Every day," she tells him; and looks right into his eyes; so dark, so impossibly dark.

They were both at peace now, Bart and Misty: their bodies six feet under; their spirits free to roam the world, walking hand in hand into an unknown future that they'd never had the chance to fully experience together in life.

Fate is cruel like that.

.

Teenage Chuck is flippant and callous. It's how she knows he loves her daughter, but he's scared. When Chuck gets scared, he does stupid things.

It's also how she knows that he will come back. He always returns to their home. Because there is a life he's never lived waiting for him within these walls. And he could never possibly let that go. He could never let her daughter go either.

And she doesn't need a psychiatrist, psychologist or any other kind of psych referential to tell her that she made her daughter the way she is. Her daughter is the epitome of a 'control freak', a perfectionist, a stickler for detail. It may have caused some… mishaps in the past, but she won't apologise for it: not now, not ever. To lose control is to put your fate in the hands of others; and she knows full well that there can be nothing more dangerous. She won't let her daughter live through her mistakes.

When she held him for the first time: he glared up at her with ferocious pools of darkness, like an abyss she could drown in, his little brow knitted together in a scowl, and his fingers waving frantically as he demanded everything. He was the ugliest thing she had ever seen.

And as she looked down into those indignant eyes, she fell instantly and totally in love.

But no matter what she may feel for the boy, it's not enough; will never be enough. Because she loved his mother first, and she just cannot trade one for the other; cannot treat him, as she knows she should, as she knows he deserves.

Her daughter is stronger than she was, stronger than she thinks she'll ever be. She loves this boy, this man, with every fiber of her being; and she won't let him go. Not now, not ever.

She'll hold onto him forever, even if he tries to let go; and even if he runs to the farthest corners of the earth, she will find him.

.

He's standing outside her daughter's room, watching her sleep through the open doorway.

It reminds her of another time: a moment gone, though the embers of the fire remain.

When she returns, having retrieved what she knows he is long overdue, he hasn't moved; eyes still transfixed on her daughter's sleeping form.

"She's so like you," he remarks, shadows marking the contours of his face in the dark hallway.

"And not just in appearance," he sends her a sideways look and she smiles wryly at him in return.

"Doesn't know when to trust people," he adds, and a myriad of emotions cut across his face.

"Doesn't know when to just stop – when to just _be_," he ends.

"We have to be taught these things," she tells him, because she knows, and she understands.

"By the people we love," she says, "And who love us back."

She holds out the envelope, and waits until he takes it; never takes her eyes off him.

She leaves him alone to read it. She knows what it says: was seated next to his mother as she wrote it, watched his father stare at her daughter with every breath she took and every word that was scrawled across the page.

"_My darling boy," _it reads.

"_I wonder about you every day, every hour, every minute, every second._

_I wonder what you'll look like. If you'll have your father's beautiful blue eyes; so clear and completely enchanting. If you'll share my dark locks, my distinct features._

_I wonder what you'll act like. If you'll inherit your father's innate self-assuredness, or my intense pride: how this will serve you when coupled with the stubbornness we both share._

_I wonder what you'll be like. If you'll be a little clone of your father or a mama's boy._

_I wonder how you'll use your intelligence and talent. I wonder what devices you'll turn your charm and wit to. I wonder if you'll find love, if you'll discover hate._

_My hope for you is that experience life to its fullest: take risks, grab opportunities. That you will learn from your mistakes and move on, never hold back, and love._

_I love you with everything I have to give, and I know that when we finally meet it will be the happiest I shall ever be. And so I know that whatever you are, whatever you look like, whatever your actions are: I will always love you._

_The world is yours for the taking, my son; make sure you grasp it with everything you have to give._

_Forever yours, Mom."_

When he's finished, he folds the letter closed, but doesn't put it back inside the envelope.

She watches him take that decisive step into her daughter's room; sees her daughter rouse at his presence as it draws ever nearer. And when she sees their eyes lock; sees the emotion that was playing on his face during those tense moments when he watched her, spill out into heartfelt words; sees her daughter's fingers wrap round his and squeeze tightly; she breathes in, at ease.

She observes her daughter's hand unfurl from his and come away with the slip of paper; and her eyes scan the page, her focus so engrossed in the words that mean so much to him, she can see the vitality this moment holds for them. Her daughter lifts her head, meets his eyes: and hers are so dark, darker than she's ever seen them.

"Love me?" she hears him ask.

She thought it would be her daughter, who would utter the words. It's as if there has been a momentous shift in them, and yet this is how they've always been; meant for each other.

Their hearts have split open, time and again, and they're still painting their love for one another in the space between them.

"Always," her daughter responds, with such fervor, such promise; she knows that this love that lies between them, it cannot fail.

And so she closes her door, and lets them be.

.

**The End.**

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A/N: the line about 'teenage chuck is flippant' is inspired from a small part in 'Butterfly House'  
Also, the order of this can be taken (though, it is open to personal interpretation) as: after the most recent episode – night before Bart & Lily's wedding – day of Bart and Lily's wedding – after Bart's funeral/death – after Bart's funeral/before Chuck's "I love you" in 2.25 – after the most recent episode

Thanks so much for reading – please let me know what you thought!  
Steph  
xxx


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